Grace After Midnight by Felicia “Snoop” Pearson & David Ritz [Book]

While Felicia is a brilliant actor in a truly chilling role, what’s most remarkable about “Snoop” is what she has overcome in her life. Snoop was born a three-pound cross-eyed crack baby in East Baltimore. Those streets are among the toughest in the world, but Snoop was tougher. The runt of the ghetto showed an early aptitude for drug slinging and violence and thrived as a baby gangsta until she landed in Jessup state penitentiary after killing a woman in self-defense. There she rebelled violently against the system, and it was only through the cosmic intervention of her mentor, Uncle Loney, that she turned her life around. A couple of years ago, Snoop was discovered in a nightclub by one of The Wire’s cast members and quickly recruited to be one of television’s most frightening and intriguing villains.

Unlike the rest of the world, I didn’t manage to come across a certain HBO show that simply changed the world, right under my ignorant nose. The Wire went off the air over 6 years ago, but I figured it was never to late to see what all the fuss was about. And as I mentioned in our previous interview with one of the show’s stars, Michael Kostroff, I was absolutely smitten with this delightful piece of television drama that was gritty as hell, and downright fucking nerve-racking to watch at times. And no character truly exemplified the gritty realness and instability of the streets of Baltimore like the cold-blooded killer Snoop, who was 1/2 responsible for the couple of dozen bodies that laid slain in the abandon buildings of Baltimore using nothing more than cold ass heart and an expensive nail gun.

But, what if you were to learn that there was indeed some truth behind this fascinating character? What if there the space between reality and fantasy wasn’t nearly as wide as you originally imagined? It’s easy to understand that any kind of fictional television or film drama is normally based on some sort of truth. But, what if the truth was fiction than you could ever imagine possible? Well, if you can’t, you would do yourself a world of good to check out Felicia “Snoop” Pearson’s memoir, Grace After Midnight.

Now Real Snoop is not a cold-blooded killer who leaves bodies to rot simply because that’s “just the way it is.” In fact, nowadays, she is about as far from something of that nature as possible. But, Real Snoop and Fake Snoop were once very similar. It should be evident enough that David Simon and folks behind The Wire wanted this woman with no previous acting credits, a girl straight from the streets in which they were suppose to be portraying, to not only star as a very important figure in the show, but to even keep not only her own name, but her own identity. Felicia “Snoop” Pearson is about as close to the overall story of Baltimore that The Wire tended to portray to the world. In fact, I would find it safe to say that Snoop IS the story of Baltimore. Albeit a sad and disturbing one at times, but the real story.

Snoop with Michael K. Williams at SXSW 2013

In very natural and stylistic prose, Snoop (with co-author credit going to David Ritz) runs through the series of events as well as some prime examples of what it meant to live and ride in East Baltimore to kick off the book. Her matter-of-factly type prose is somewhat frightening even. You can watch enough hood movies and episodes of The Wire, but when you hear these stories first hand, and in such a nonchalant fashion, it just might scare the shit out of you. What is most disturbing is indeed how Snoop can describe events like being 10 years old and shooting a boy in the leg for being a bully with such ease and simplicity that it has that “agh, that was nothing” feel to it. Or watching another man’s brains getting blown straight out the top of their head, and simply keeping a cold dark stair to the shooter mere feet from you. If you have never experience such darkness, there is simply no way you could ever understand. I don’t pretend to, but I am indeed fascinated.

But, with such darkness, there is always a light. Snoops story of ending up in prison as a teenager is probably world renowned by now. During an act of self defense, Snoop found herself spending 6 years of her life behind bars. And it was during her time of incarceration that Snoop truly had to “see the light”, so to speak. We aren’t talking simply about some sort of God like presence, although if that is what you choose to believe, that might just be it. All that can be said is that this courageous young woman felt, what she called, “grace after midnight”. After the death of the man she called Uncle, the man who always had her best intentions at heart and cared for her as family, was gunned down in a drug deal gone bad, Snoop flipped her wig, lost her consciousness and almost lost her own life. But, something happen. Some sort of mysterious force came to her in the middle of the night, and she felt a grave change come over her. A change for the better.

Snoop left incarceration at the age of 20 with a whole new outlook on life. She was going to work hard and become the best person she knew she could definitely be. She could be the person that would make Uncle and Mama proud. And she tried, real fucking hard. But in a serious turn of events that represents just one example of a serious problem in our country: we are a nation that tends to say give a big middle finger to the rehabilitated who want nothing more than to change their lives around. Fat cat asshole employers refuse to higher convicted criminals who have “paid their debt to society” (for whatever the hell that is really worth to these savages) and bust their ass on a car assembly or in a factory moving boxes. It is the fear of the criminally charged that leads the hopeless ex-con back to the ways that got them thrown in jail in the first place. And then we complain that our jails are overcrowded. It is a devilish cycle simple doesn’t seem to have an end in sight, until some assholes open their eyes and decide to be the change that needs to happen. Stop with this bullshit “trickle down economics” tactics and try some “throw down a bit of respect” to those you employ. But, I digress……

Snoop soon found her way back on the corner and fighting against the law once again. But, by a stroke of “luck” or “grace” or whatever it is, she found herself in just the right place at the right time to meet The Wire star Michael K. Williams, who obviously saw something that the show needed, and brought her into the life. And, as they say, the rest is history. But, it’s not the ending of the story that matters when you finally finish this powerful memoir. This is a story of perseverance, struggle, striving, failing, loving, and trying. Ms. Pearson is a woman who had obstacles thrown at her from the day she was born. Sometimes these obstacles were brought on by her own accord or by simply ignoring the wonderful people around her who only wanted the best for her. Other times it was a simple cause and effect structure of living the street life. And while her story has some true specificity to it, her story is by large far from uncommon. But in the end, Snoop has won the fight against herself, the fight against her environment, and the fight against the demons that haunt us all. She left her old ways behind after kicking at so much darkness, that it simply had to bleed light.

To sum this book up in a just a few words, Nothing could exemplify Felicia “Snoop” Pearson better than her one last words in this haunting yet beautiful memoir:

“Where does the light come from? And what do you call it?. You can call it God. You call it Jesus. These names are good names. But I call it the miracle of love. I call it Grace After Midnight.”